Why doesnt comedy anime work well on Toonami? (2024)

Comedy airs...literally everywhere else on Adult Swim. Toonami is our one break from all that comedy that airs the rest of the week. How would you feel if that break was infested with more comedy? You wouldn't be happy with that, would you? You would lose all your variety, like what happened with Cartoon Network.

Zorak Masaki said:

Maybe action comedies could work, but I cant think of any right now.

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Zom 100 is literally airing on Toonami right now. There's also One Piece.

They haven’t really aired that many comedy anime… Pop Team Epic comes to mind as the most unfitting thing Toonami ever aired. Toonami is really more of an action block so a random gag anime wore thin fast. Especially when the show was just 11 minutes of nonsense aired twice in a row with minor differences…

On the other hand, they have aired shows with comedy aspects. It’s hard to categorize Tenchi Muyo GXP, but you could call it a sex comedy or a sci-fi adventure. That show was badly received on Toonami and got dumped three hours later. It sort of stood out next to new Toonami’s early lineup which was filled with angsty shows like Casshern Sins and Deadman Wonderland. The original Tenchi seems better remembered, and surprisingly aired on Toonami for years on weekday afternoons. It was a strange fit for the block, but it came along when AS wasn’t yet a thing. In the Tenchi manga by Viz the editors say the majority of Tenchi fans are girls. Maybe Cartoon Network liked that Tenchi could appeal more to both genders due to the mix of sci fi and romance.

Another comedy anime that comes to mind is Bobobo, but again it is a mix of other genres. The manga originated as a parody of Fist of the North Star and is filled with references to other Shonen Jump titles like DBZ and Yugioh. The show does have plenty of action, but it is done in a tongue in cheek style using absurd or gross out attacks involving nose hair and farting. It seemed like the TOM3 Saturday era actually did best with action comedies. Bobobo got to fully air.

Duel Masters lasted a long time as well in the 7 pm slot. It was a tongue in cheek parody of Yugioh. Season one was especially funny. The writers had free rein to turn it into a proto abridged series. Season two is a really weird attempt at an American exclusive season where they go to the card world. It is similar to how 4Kids commissioned the “Capsule Monsters” season of Yugioh which never aired in Japan. They changed voices and writers and it felt very different. Then season 3 came along, and they went back to Japanese footage, but with a third round of voices and writers. This was closer in tone to the first season, but it came along when Saturday Toonami was a death sentence for anything not called Naruto. Sadly the last season never finished airing. The juggling act they did between Transformers Cybertron, Pokemon, Yugioh, and Duel Masters in the first hour of the block ultimately doomed the dub of the “2.0” season to being partially lost media.

Zatch Bell was also an action comedy, and seemed to do well at first. It replaced the much more serious and adult skewing Yu Yu Hakusho, and was given a chance to air on Miguzi too. It eventually ended up going online only as part of the jetstream initiative, which was overall a failure and led to the discontinuation of the dub. Again we can chalk up this to the failure of late TOM3 era choices, trying to make Jetstream a thing too early by focusing on exclusives.

I can count the amount of comedy series they have aired on one hand. The most prominent is Pop Team Epic, and that was a dive into the deep end abruptly so I’m not surprised it didn’t mesh with the audience.

I don’t think the audience is against comedy anime. Most of us would rather the block air SOMETHING rather than the upcoming schedules that have nothing.